Friday, November 11, 2011

Colorado attorney general calls MMJ a 'fraud'

Thursday night, Attorney General John Suthers, Colorado Springs' favorite son, spoke in Glenwood Springs on a panel for YouthZone, a program that helps at-risk youth.

And while one speaker, Dr. Paul Salmen, went the logical route — saying he didn't want to "condemn medical marijuana as an evil substance" but did want to keep it out of the hands of teenagers — Suthers took an oh-so-more-rabid approach, reports the Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

“In my opinion, the medical marijuana regime in Colorado is nothing more than a state-sanctioned fraud on the part of several thousand patients and a few dozen doctors, in violation of federal law,” he said.

Of the roughly 130,000 authorized medical marijuana patients currently in Colorado, he said the vast majority are males in their 20s and 30s.

“Folks, that is precisely the demographic profile of recreational drug users in the state,” Suthers said.

“I'm tempted to support legalization in an effort to get away from the government hypocrisy,” he said. “But I won't do that … because it would only increase the perception that there is no risk with this drug.”

This despite statistics collected by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which administers the patient registry — the number of which are decreasing, incidentally — that show the average age for male and female patients is 40 and 43, respectively.